Indy 500 By The Numbers

Polesitter Ed Carpenter is one favorite to win the 500

My full time job is teaching math and science to middle schoolers so I'm a numbers guy. The Indianapolis 500 has been contested 96 times already so the event is full of numbers to play with so I thought I would take a spin of my own through this year's race figures just for kicks. Although I play the lottery occasionally, I am not a gambler but I wondered who the oddsmakers in Las Vegas had instilled as the favorite this year. according to Linemakers, this year's pole winner Ed Carpenter, three-time Indy winner Helio Castroneves, Marco Andretti and 2008 winner Scott Dixon, have been tabbed at 7-1 odds. Another three-time winner and the defending Indy 500 champion, Dario Franchitti, is next up at 8-1. Interestingly, Dario and teammate Dixon start next to each other on Row 6. James Hinchcliffe is also at 8-1 and he has won twice already this season in the IZOD Indycar Series, and been a stalwart in the Andretti Autosport onslaught on top practice speeds this past week. Hinchtown's teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay, my pre-practice pick to win this year, is at 10-1 while another Andretti racer, rookie sensation Carlos Munoz, is at 20-1. Even though I wrote earlier this month that Ed Carpenter should be considered a darkhorse candidate, this may no longer be true since he has won twice on ovals in Indycars, and now he gets to start from P1 at the track owned by his relatives. If car numbers mean anything, the last driver to win with #20 was Emerson Fittipaldi in 1989 in his legendary duel with Al Unser, Jr., so Ed would be in good company were he to follow in Emmo's wheel tracks.

A. J. Allmendinger has support to win Indy

Oddly enough A. J. Allmendinger is posted at 12-1 along with Penske Racing teammate Will Power even though the Dinger has never run the 500 before. Chalk that up to the strength of the Penske team and A. J.'s prowess in Champ Car a few years back. The pride of Japan, Takuma Sato, is listed at 30-1 but I would put five bucks on him in a heartbeat since he came so close to winning last year and won an Indycar race this season at long last. Sato's teammate, rookie Conor Daly, is only given a 300-1 chance of winning from the last row but rest assured that race fans in Noblesville, Indiana and Heritage Christian High School would be willing to take those odds and blow a few dollars to show their support. Needless to say, the top drivers with the top teams are being touted as potential winners this year, but the 500 usually has its share of surprises in store. 

My pick to win:  Ryan Hunter-Reay

Lots of other numbers factor into this year's race. There are four previous winners and four women starters. Dario won in #10 in 2010. The most experienced and oldest driver is Buddy Lazier at 45 years of age with 16 Indy 500's under his belt, although he starts next to Daly in Row 11, and isn't likely to do much on race day. Carols Munoz is the youngest at 21 and hopes to follow the example of fellow Columbian Roberto Guerrero challenged for an Indy as a rookie in 1984. Eighteen drivers, including Munoz,  have experience in the Firestone Indy Lights Series, so the Road to Indy feeder system must be judged a success on that basis. Seventeen drivers in the field have led laps at Indy previously, and Dario has led more than anyone who is starting the race this Sunday. The lowest starting position ever to produce a 500 winner is 28th, and you have to go back to Louis Meyer in 1936 and Ray Harroun in the inaugural 500 in 1911 to find them. When Lone Star Johnny Rutherford won the 1974 race, he had started 25th but since then 30 of 38 winners have started in 10th or better. J. R. Hildebrand starts 10th this year and was one turn away from winning as a rookie in 2011 when the late Dan Wheldon got his second Indy win in car #98. Starting next to Hildebrand? Alex Tagliani in Car #98. Don't count Tags out, even at 50-1 odds. There's another five bucks that would be well spent.

If these numbers don't make your head spin, then try these: as I recall, the teams ran over 11,000 laps (27,500 miles) in the nine days of track activity, which is more than enough to make a lap around the earth at the equator (24,859.82 miles), or for every car in the field to run the full 500 miles 1.67 times. My camera counters were spinning too as I shot 4,490 images (that I kept), and that's with a schedule that only allowed me to be at the track full time on four out of the nine days. If you add up all the car numbers for the 33 starters, the total is 1,028, so the average car number is 31.15152. While there is no car #31 in this year's race, all the cars in Row 11 end in the number 1 - (41, 91, 81), and the last driver to win in #31 was Al Unser, Jr. in 1994. The third row car numbers add up to 31 and it includes three of the odds-on favorites:  Ryan Hunter-Reay, Helio Castroneves and James Hinchcliffe. Finally, in Row 6, the car numbers add up to 33, there are 33 cars in the field, and 3 + 3 equals 6. This row features Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti and Takuma Sato, so watch out for these guys!

The most important number is that the 97th Indianapolis 500, which used to also carry the moniker of an "International Sweepstakes", is now just a little more than three days away. It will my 38th in a row and I can hardly wait to see you all at 16th & Georgetown!

A Week at the Indy 500 Lasts a LIfetime

Katherine Legge is happy to be back in the 500

What a week this has been. Nine days of preparation for the 97th Indianapolis 500 are now over and I feel it in my bones. Bump Day wrapped up qualifying today with zero drama after Saturday's rain delayed Pole Day shootout. Other than Ed Carpenter, Katherine Legge is probably the happiest driver in the 500 as she jumped in a car this morning, got it up to speed, qualified on the bubble as 33rd fastest and never had to deal with a serious challenge from the only other car/driver combination, Michel Jourdain, Jr. I felt bad for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team which thrashed all day to find speed for Jourdain but he just kept going slower and slower the later it got today. And that was even after teammate Graham Rahal took the car out for a few laps in the middle of the afternoon to try and help sort it out. Neither driver looked comfortable in the 17 car at all. I hate that there was no bumping today once the field got filled around 1:00 p.m., but most of the qualified teams took advantage of the track time, spending most of the day running race trim in traffic and emerging with their equipment intact. Carburetion Day this Friday will likely be just a quick shakedown for most teams.

Pole Winner Ed Carpenter leads a pack into Turn 1

I wish I knew how many miles I walked this week at the Speedway as I was able to be there eight out of the nine days the track was open. Every year I talk about wearing a pedometer but it never seems to come to mind when I'm getting my stuff together for the track and this year was no different. With the warmer weather the last few days, it's a challenge to stay hydrated while lugging a few extra pounds of camera gear around. Today I had a special treat as I borrowed a 400 mm lens from Canon and went to shoot in Turn 1 while all the top teams were in race preparation mode. The down side of schlepping that 400 around was it was damn heavy but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Traipsing up and down the pit lane to get driver shots is one of the most enjoyable parts of working Indy but also one of the most tiring. Hot, loud, smelly - wait a minute; it's perfect! All the sensory stimulation anyone could want for people who love that sort of thing. And I do.

Indy's Infield Hawk

Another aspect of walking so much at Indy that may not occur to casual fans is the nuances of the track. Yesterday as I was going back to my car to swap out some gear, I noticed something in one of the last remaining large trees in the infield. From prior experience I knew that was a large redtail hawk nests in that tree so I got my longest lens and took a break from the race cars to shoot some wildlife - and I don't mean in the snakepit. The hawk waited there for me to get close and kept a keen watch on me as I circled the tree and took pictures. Race fans walking by probably wondered what the heck I was doing, but I did hear someone say "Look, there's a bald eagle". I cut them some slack for not knowing their birds and went about getting shots of this beautiful creature. I've seen this bird, or a family member, numerous times on race day circling the crowd high above the track so it was a real blessing to be able to take its picture while it was guarding its nest. I have a special affinity for hawks - and I believe they do for me as well. I see them all the time while traveling, there's a pair that lives at the cemetery in Muncie, Indiana where my sister Carol is buried that I see almost every time I go pay my respects, and whenever I see one I know everything is going to work out the way it's supposed to. I use one of my hawk photo on my website and business cards, and have a hawk based on that photo tattooed on my left shoulder. Lo and behold, at the end of Bump Day today as I stood on the 2nd floor balcony of the media center, there he was, circling high overhead in the middle of the track, white belly exposed as it lorded over its territory. Seeing it today was no accident.

And I suppose it was no accident either that a group of total newcomers from Manassas, Virginia struck up a conversation with me about 5:00 this afternoon as I shot from the rooftop platform seating area above the formula one garages. They were college students and teachers in Indy for a robotics competition at IUPUI, and they literally knew nothing about the track or the 500. One young man asked why they were called Indycars; another asked how qualifying worked and what the teams were doing running so many laps at that hour. I got the chance to explain the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway again, just as I had on Friday to my middle schools students, and explained how the video displays showed current lap times for cars on track and what the numbers on the main scoring pylon meant. It was a fitting way to end another memorable week at IMS, and now I have a few thousand more digital images to add to my archives, and more memories which will last a lifetime.

The best is yet to come. Next Sunday at this time I will be recapping the 500 itself, carving more indelible scenes into my brain and contributing photos to the great story which is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You have to come see for yourself; I promise it will be worth it.

Ed Carpenter On Top After Indy's Longest Pole Day

Ed Carpenter and team members celebrate an Indy Pole win

The longest Pole Day in Indianapolis 500 history ended after 7:15 p.m. tonight with a sprint car guy and Butler Bulldog taking the first qualifying spot after the Fast 9 shootout:  Ed Carpenter! Now rain on the first day of qualifications at Indy is not new, as it has happened many times before. What was new was the early decision by Indycar to let the normal qualifying process play out all the way to the scheduled 6:00 p.m. closing time and then run the Fast 9 starting at 6:30. I don't ever remember the Speedway running after 6:00 and it was well worth the wait for local fans who genuinely rooted Ed  and his "little team that could" on. I said earlier this week Ed could be a darkhorse this May but thought sure Will Power would close the deal as the final Fast 9 Qualifier. Even though two Andretti Autosport drivers took the other two front row starting positions with Carlos Munoz second and Marco Andretti third, Ed taking P1 was a huge victory for the little guy.

I had an extremely long day and as I suspected in my last blog post, my Indy 500 OCD behavior took over early. I left home on Indy's northeast side at 5:45 a.m. and was one of the first people to set up in the media center a little after 6:00. I was hoping to get a sunrise shot over the Pagoda tower but it was heavily overcast and it didn't seem like there was any way the morning practice would start at 8:00 as scheduled after the rain we got last night. But it did so I headed out on pit road and then down to the end of the front stretch where the cars turn into the first corner to shoot. About halfway through the session, I walked back to the media center and took my gear to Canon to get a suspected problem looked at, but thankfully it turned out to be operator error and my equipment checked out fine. Can't say the same about the operator however, as sometimes my 7D seems to do things on its own which still bewitch me even after owning it for three years and shooting tens of thousands of images.

Speaking of which, the counters on both my main camera bodies rolled over again this week, so there's another 10,000 images captured. Ironically, my 7D rolled over just as the pole winning celebration for Ed Carpenter was getting started when it became apparent that Will Power was not going to be quick enough, so editing was a snap since those images started at 0001. I didn't even leave the media center until after 8:15 p.m. and still had to get dinner, write this post and finish another file transfer from the Fast 9 session.

Rain, rain go away!

I'm not complaining. I'm just going on adrenaline now, still hearing the track's public address system announcers in my ears along with the turbocharged engine sounds from the canyon which is Indy's front stretch. I am getting a little sick of the rain so far this racing season. It rained almost the whole drive to Salem Speedway for the ARCA race at the end of April. Then I went to Talladega to shoot the NASCAR races the first weekend in May and both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races had lengthy rain delays, not to mention all the rain I drove through to get there. My photog friends already give me hell about bringing rain with me at every race I shoot after I got drenched at Mid Ohio a couple of years ago and almost ruined my camera gear, so enough already with the "moisture"!

My lady friend alternately calls me a "madman" and the "Energizer Bunny". Bump Day will be more of the same on Sunday. And we will actually have at least one car bumped now that Katherine Legge has been confirmed. This wasn't quite the 24 Hours of Indianapolis today, but it sure feels like it.